Yesterday was a good day. The weather this winter has been stellar. It was nearly 60 degrees yesterday, but the wind was whipping. Bill, Catherine and I decided to go ride MTB. This was the third day in a row for me on my MTB and I was just finally starting to get my bike handling back. Anyway, we all overdressed and had to start stripping clothing off nearly as soon as we clipped in. When we go over to the trail, the ground had thawed and there was a thin layer of mud on top of the dirt. We decided to go out and do gravel roads instead of slipping around in the woods. I had been feeling pretty tired this past week, but had been good riding MTB bikes. Yesterday was a struggle riding out west in the hills with so much wind in our faces all day.

Then last night, my TradeWind Energy team had a party for me in Lawrence. It was nice. My friend and sponsor, Matt Gilhousen invited us over to his new house, nearly on the KU campus for some homemade pizza and comradery. It was fun. I hadn’t seen most these guys for the past month, so it was nice catching up. Brian is getting all antsy about racing and is talking about going down to Texas to race soon. A month ago he said he was super out of shape, but like I said above, the weather has been great recently, so he must be feeling better, or just more confident. Either way, it was a surprise everyone was so ready to pin on numbers.

It is supposed to be nearly 50 for a high most of this week. I have to finish up putting a rubber roof on a friends porch this week. The limiting factor is the temperature for the glue to flash off to adhere the rubber to the insulation. It looks good for a window sometime mid week, so I need to get on it. There is a ton of lifting and ladder scaling involved, so maybe I’ll just skip trying to get into the gym this week, like I had planned the last month.

Catherine started the peeling of clothing early, but eventually we all shed nearly everything.

Michelle Jensen made a cake with world's stripes.

Matt was busy with pizza dough most of the night.

Photo of our guys in front of a poster sized picture of the finish last week in Louisville.

Matt presented me with this bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Label Scotch Whiskey. I’m not too much into liquor, but this is the about the finest of the fine in whiskey.

Bromont found the dog bed early and spent most of the evening here.

Yesterday I didn’t spend one second on a bicycle and I am pretty toasted. I’ll say it once again, it is amazing how horrible you can be in any other physical activity when you are supposedly in shape for riding a bike. I really don’t understand it, but it is true.

I spent most of the morning on my knees cutting wood and measuring. By the afternoon, when it came to the real work I was already sore. That being said, it is a good physical workout. More equivalent to weight lifting than anything else. Plus, since it’s winter, the temperature and body temperature regulation is kind of tricky. I got all dressed for standing around at 40 and pretty soon I was down to a T-shirt sweating. Then, later in the afternoon, when the sun had moved further west, we were in the shadows and it was cold again.

The roll of rubber weighs close to 400 lbs. and we had to carry it over to my building to spread it out on the roof, to hopefully, let the creases flatten out. It was rolled into a cumbersome load, so we re-rolled the rubber and put it on a 4 x 4 to carry it. That wasn’t so bad, but I’m sure I’m going to be feeling it tomorrow.

I guess I can call it training for surfing. I still plan to learn how to surf sometime before the meat of the season gets here. I have pretty strong arms already, but they haven’t been in use much recently. Guess they are now.

I like construction because it takes a fair amount of intellect. It is like a puzzle that you have to solve in a specific order. Especially doing renovation. No two guys will do the exact same thing in the same order, but it can turn out nearly the same at the end. Kind of like racing, there are lots of different ways to get to the finish line first depending upon you’re personal abilities.

It is kind of funny, but I always assume that the guys that are working at the roofing company know how to use everything they sell. That is far from the truth. Most the guys behind the counter have never adhered a square inch of rubber to anything, but for some weird reason, it is hard for me to realize that. I think they are experts, but now that I’ve done it a few times, it is apparent that they don’t really have a good idea how to do it or what most the stuff they sell is for. Seems wrong, but I’m sure it’s the case in most businesses.

Man, how about Alberto Contador putting on 7.5 kilos on the off season. That is close to 17 lbs. I guess if your off season is 6 months long, then it’s just a little over a kilo a month. I have no idea how they do it. I would be in complete panic mode if I was anywhere near that much “overweight”. Plus, the guy weighs a lot less than me. Maybe Alberto needs to get some pointers from Valverde, since his last off season was 2 years and he came back firing on all cylinders. Or maybe he should just do a little construction in the off season to stay in shape.

Bill and Trudi checking out the mess I made this morning before they showed up.

We didn't remove the old tar and gravel before covering it with insulatlion.

The insulation partially down. We are running sort of short of the screws and plates to secure it to decking. They are stupid expense with the screws costing close to 75 cents each. I think we are maybe 20 short and they only sell them in 1000 qualities. I'll figure it out tomorrow.

Even Alberto is using the ocean during the off season, a little more buoyant than usually.

I saw these trees a couple days ago coming back from a ride. I thought they were very interesting/pretty being interwoven like they are.